While we were traveling back and forth between Lynchburg and Front Royal looking for a house to move into, quite often we stopped at the overlooks on Rt. 81 in the Afton Mountains. I took this picture during one of those stops. The rays of sunlight shooting over the mountain imply hope and trust to me.
About a week ago I posted The Biblical Success Manual from Proverbs 3:3-4. In a nutshell, Proverbs 3:3-4 says that if we demonstrate steadfast love and faithfulness we will find success in the eyes of God and man.
Today I read this verse:
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
—Joshua 1:8
This one is a bit tougher than the earlier directive, and Old Testament Israel was not able to follow the law. The gospel of Jesus Christ was not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. So aligning with Christ in belief and action should contribute to success. Perhaps the word success is the next definition I need to consider.
...
Yesterday’s bi-partisan meeting about healthcare inspired me to combine a couple photos.
As God teaches me about demonstrating steadfast love and faithfulness I find myself tempted to try to “earn” my salvation. But that’s not the deal. I need to work to be more like Christ. I need to do those things that God has called me to do—the good deeds for which God saved me. And He’ll take care of the rest.
This header photo is of my Jewish friend Daniella. I like the iPod earphones cord that lets you know she’s just kicking back on the beach enjoying music. This feels like summer’s coming. Yea!
ecently, it seems that God has been stressing two characteristics on my mind. These personal characteristics show up regularly in my daily bible readings for the past few weeks. As I have mentioned previously, steadfast love and faithfulness are characteristics I am compelled to consider and to work on in my life.
And as is so common when communing with God through his word, he is teaching me these things while providing comfort and encouragement perfectly suited to the things I am encountering in life at this time. God is so good to us. In fact, he demonstrates steadfast love and faithfulness continually.
This was part of today’s bible reading:
I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.
Psalm 40:1,3
When I was a music major at Baptist Bible College in the early 1980s, our choir chose Psalm 40:3 as our choir’s theme verse. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.
Over the years since then I have considered the fact that this verse does not say that many will hear the new song God has put in my mouth and will put their trust in the Lord. It says that many will see. Although I am a musician and would love the concept of the song being the catalyst to these people’s turning in faith to God, the inspired words of scripture don’t allow me to consider it that way. It seems that this verse is saying that many people will see the fact that God has made this change in my song. The fact that he has made this change is what will turn them to God in fear and trust. It’s not my song, but the fact that God changed my song to a song of “praise to our God.”
The psalm goes on to say:
Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie!
You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told.
Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.
Then I said, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me:
I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”
I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord.
I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.
Psalm 40:4-10
When God moved us from Lynchburg to Front Royal this past summer I committed publicly to following the 3-Step Program of deliverance found in Psalm 50:15, seen in the callout box to the right. We were in a stressful situation and didn’t see a clear way out of the trouble. Psalm 50:15 says to “call on the Lord in the day of trouble” and the verse promises that he will deliver us when we call on him in the day of trouble. But then the verse goes on with a further responsiblity that we have when he delivers us: “you shall glorify me.”
Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.
Psalm 40 is saying a very similar thing. Especially clear in verse 10, this Psalm is also saying that when God delivers us we are to proclaim it publicly, which is very similar to saying, “you shall glorify me.” But this time the psalmist says, I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and faithfulness from the great congregation.
I was worried a few days ago that these posts may be too personal and may bore the visitors to this blog. After all, these are personal things God is teaching me. Maybe they don’t apply to others. Or at least that was my reasoning.
As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me; your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me!
But were I to hide God’s deliverance within my heart and not proclaim it to the great congregation, I would not be fulfilling my part of the 3-Step Program, and God would not be getting the glory for what he has done, is doing, and will continue to do as he lavishes on all of us his steadfast love and faithfulness.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!
od has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, as we are told in 1 Corinthians 1:27. This fact sometimes shows us how proud we were before God drew us to himself, conquered our will, and gave us a heart of flesh.
I am currently listening to an audiobook recording of Confessions of St. Augustine. It is an outstanding book and shows how little we have changed in the almost 2,000 years since Augustine was a bishop.
This is Augustine’s recollection of his early view of scripture, prior to his conversion:
I resolved then to bend my mind to the holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. But behold, I see a thing not understood by the proud, nor laid open to children, lowly in access, in its recesses lofty, and veiled with mysteries; and I was not such as could enter into it, or stoop my neck to follow its steps. For not as I now speak, did I feel when I turned to those Scriptures; but they seemed to me unworthy to be compared to the stateliness of Tully: for my swelling pride shrunk from their lowliness, nor could my sharp wit pierce the interior thereof. Yet were they such as would grow up in a little one. But I disdained to be a little one; and, swollen with pride, took myself to be a great one.
St. Augustine, The Confessions
Way of the Master
